"The family who has been renting the little house on University is moving out next month," mom told me one day in December. "Dad was wondering if you and Sheldon would like to move in there?"
"You're kidding!" I exclaimed in excitement. "Yes, that would be great!"
And so my dream came true, and I got to live in the little rental house I had helped dad renovate years before. It was so much fun!
The house was tiny and old, but it's character made up for all of it's inconveniences. The first time I went in this house I fell in love with the glass door handles. There was also a big rock fireplace in the little living room, a step up to a tiny alcove with a bedroom on the left, a tiny bathroom in the middle, and a smaller bedroom on the right. The kitchen was old and cramped, but dad added a small counter and cupboards which helped, and once I'd made some cute yellow gingham curtains and painted everything white it became a cheerful room. There was an old, gas wall furnace in the front room for heating and an ancient evaporative cooler mounted behind a square hole in the middle of the back room to cool the house in summer. It made a terrific racket and mostly just increased the humidity, but it helped a little.
The best part of the house was the yard. The front of the house had a tiny lawn with big trees on both sides, but the back of the house had a deep yard, hedged in on the back and east with oleanders, and on the west with honeysuckles. There were three or four huge trees which kept the yard cool and shady, making a wonderful place for barbecues and family gatherings.
Sheldon began working at the stereo center the first of January, and I turned in my paperwork to be a substitute teacher for the Mesa School District, to help out our finances, but that was only part time, when I got called, and I could turn a job down if I wasn't feeling up to it. But amazingly, by my fourth month of pregnancy I felt wonderful and had all kinds of energy. So I played house. What fun it was to sew curtains, paint walls, and decorate my own little castle.
I wasn't really very excited about substituting, but it turned out to be as much fun as working on our house. Unlike having my own classroom where I had to plan what I would teach, keep track of grades, and do all the other extra things an elementary school teacher has to do as well as teaching the children, all a substitute has to do is follow the real teachers instructions and keep the kids entertained. It was like playing school, and I had so much fun. Sometimes I subbed in elementary classrooms, but just as often I worked at junior highs or high schools. My most memorable job was the day I substituted a high school boys PE class. They had made a mistake, assuming I was a man since my name is Gale. When I showed up, eight and a half months pregnant, you should have seen the secretaries face. She called the head PE coach to see what he wanted to do. One look at me and he decided I wasn't going to be much good for him, but he had made such a stink demanding he get a substitute that he didn't want to send me home. I ended up spending the day labeling volleyballs in the girls locker-room.
I think that six months I spent decorating our little house, substituting, and preparing to become a mother were some of the happiest days of my life. We didn't have much money but we sure had a lot of fun. And the best part, back behind all the enjoyable activities we were doing every day, was the anticipation and planning for when our first baby would be born. That was so exciting!
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